My body is a cage
by Cibbs
Summary: Sherlock is in a mental hospital. He's not a detective and Moriarty doesn't exist.


MY BODY IS A CAGE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Sherlock Holmes

Mycroft Holmes

Gwendolyn, mummy

Alfie, daddy

John Watson, the psychiatrist

Nurses

Molly Hooper

Greg Lestrade

* * *

To B. B.

* * *

My body is a cage that keeps me

From dancing with the one I love

But my mind holds the key

I'm standing on a stage

Of fear and self-doubt

It's a hollow play

But they'll clap anyway

My body is a cage that keeps me

From dancing with the one I love

But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me

My mind holds the key

I'm living in an age

That calls darkness light

Though my language is dead

Still the shapes fill my head

(Peter Gabriel)

* * *

CHAPTER I

Sirens. Fear. Pain. Sherlock opened his eyes. He desired not to have done it. He was lying down on a bed, with strong leather straps holding his ankles and wrists. Tears started to well up from his eyes so profusely, that ended in dazzling him. A moment later, he saw his parents and his brother behind a window, like some kind of fish in an aquarium.

A man in white whispered something to Sherlock's father and everyone abandoned the room.

"Here I am!" Sherlock thought. "I wanna get outta here!"

But nobody could hear his thoughts. Someone opened the door and entered the room. Because of his position, he couldn't see who it was until the visitor placed a chair at his bedside and started speaking: "Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock tried to speak, but he was only able to articulate some stammering which provoked that his pillow got wet with his saliva. Half closing his eyes, he could see the small badge on the white doctor's coat: "John Watson, M.D."

"The effects of haloperidol would stay for a moment." He kept saying. "I'm sorry about the ties, but we have to ensure you don't hurt yourself."

It was then when Sherlock managed to open his eyes and tried to sit himself up.

"Moving like that you'll only get hurt. Relax."

"Whe... Whe... Where am I?"

"At McAdams Mental Hospital, in Sussex."

"For how long I have been here?"

"Three days."

Sherlock wanted to ask more questions, but the doctor pricked his arm with the sharp end of a catheter. Before falling asleep, he could hear some of the words the doctor said: "We will start the treatment tomorrow. Keep him tied."

* * *

CHAPTER II

That night's sleep wasn't a comforting one. Sherlock had nightmares and wanted someone to console him, but, because of the ties, it was impossible for him to ring the bell.

Two male nurses got near to the bed. One of them had a tray in his hands which left on the table. The other nurse took the lid off the tray and took a spoonful of something that seemed to be porridge, which put into Sherlock's mouth. He spitted it, but the male nurse didn't give up and clipped his nose with his fingers. "Swallow". He said.

Finally, Sherlock, unable to groan, ate everything they gave him.

"We'll have to tell the doctor to find another solution." Said one of the male nurses.

And the solution came that afternoon in the shape of a paper package. The nurses made Sherlock to sit himself up and opened the package. It contained a kind of rubber tube. After lubricating one of its sides, they started to insert it in one of the young man's nostrils, ignoring his protests.

Then, with the aid of a syringe, they introduced in the feeding tube some kind of milky coloured dough. About half an hour later, the food finished and the male nurses made Sherlock sit in a wheelchair and tied him again.

One of them opened the door, while the other pushed the wheelchair trough the corridor. Sherlock couldn't stand the noise the wheels made while they slide on the floor tiles and tried to move his hands to cover his ears, but his effort was in vain.

At last, they got to an operating theatre, where some nurses made Sherlock to stand up from his wheelchair. They lied down him in a pallet before tying his feet and hands with leather strips.

The last voice which Sherlock heard was of the nurse that pricked him in the shoulder. "Administering insulin."

Sherlock never knew how much time he was in comma. Minutes? Hours? Days, perhaps?

But the end of his comatose state didn't mean the end of his suffering at all. He started to tremble and woke suddenly in his room's bed. Just then, a nurse entered the room with two paper cups on a tray. One of them contained some orange juice; the other one, a blue capsule and a pink tablet.

-Come on...- Said the nurse, giving Sherlock the cups.- Who's gonna be the good fellow that will have this little pills?

A nausea installed in the young man's throat. "Do I have another option?" He thought, while he looked at the cups resting on the bedside table. He put the medicines on his tongue. "Very good!" Said the nurse before throwing the containers into the paper basket. "That's it."

When the nurse was gone, Sherlock spitted the pills in the washbasin and, then, he lied down in the bed, placing his knees as near as he could to his chin.

The next day, the nurse came back, but this time on his tray wasn't the paper cup with pills, but a glass syringe, a vial made of the same material and some kind of small plastic tube. She took off Sherlock's trousers, prepared an injection with the vial content and injected his patient in the buttocks. The tube turned to be a diazepam enema, used to relieve the convulsions caused by the shock treatment.

An hour later, a male nurse sat him in a wheelchair and took him to Doctor Watson's office.

Sherlock, stunned because of medication, wasn't able to say a coherent word in all the session. Except at the end, when a young, very tall doctor with black eyes came into Doctor Watson's office.

"Gotcha, Moriarty!" Sherlock ejaculated, jumping on him.

* * *

CHAPTER III

Sherlock had spent a month confined. Doctor Watson considered proper that his patient started writing a journal in order to improve the communication between both. He never got to understand why he attacked his colleague, nor the reason why he was depressed, so, possibly, that could be a good tool. "No pain, no gain." He thought later.

One day, after lunch, Sherlock saw his parents and his brother. He had missed them so much that, when they approached, he hugged them tight, before everyone sat down on a round table.

-We have missed you, Sherly.- Said his mother, Gwendolyn.- This is for you.

And she gave him a package wrapped in blue paper with dog pictures. Sherlock opened it and discovered a coloured pencil box, a graphite pencil and a notebook in leather binding with his initials printed in silver in the front.

-Is for you to write your fantasies.- Said Mycroft.

Sherlock punched on the table.

-It's not a fantasy!- He screamed.- Moriarty is real. I have seen him and he has followed me here. He is the one who controls all the delinquents in England. You should protect yourselves also. Go to granny's house.

He carried on speaking, but his father, Alfie, sharply interrupted:

-Enough!

Gwendolyn placed a pile of yellowish paper envelopes.

-I send them to Scotland Yard looking for help with my inquiries. Why do you have them?

From his mother's eyes tears welled up.

-Nobody ever opened it. They have brought them back to us.- She said.- Moriarty is just one of the hospital's doctors. He hasn't got any evil plan against England nor nobody. That's only in your mind and isn't real. Do you understand, my love? You're sick and need a cure, Sherly.

Sherlock stood up brusquely from the table and ran out to his bedroom while he heard his mother calling him.

As soon as he arrived to his room, he closed the door and started to look through the bed's sheets and stand upon in the chair in order to reach the highest shelves. He took all the books, checked all his coats and pyjamas pockets and, even, took the bulb from his night lamp.

Doctor Watson entered the room. After him, came a nurse with a silver metal tray in her hands.

-Sherlock? - Said the doctor in a very soft voice.

-Last night there were some microphones. – The boy whispered with tears in his eyes.- But they aren't here anymore. Who took them?

-You have to accompany us.- Said doctor Watson, giving him his hand.- We are going to give you a treatment to make you feel better.

Sherlock awoke lied down in his bed. He remembered the acrid flavour of two wooden depressors on his tongue, and then, how his body had convulsed because of en electric shock. He had no idea about the remains of the day's events.

One or two weeks passed. Sherlock never knew. Days were so monotonous, that he didn't care about if it was Wednesday or Saturday. His life was now reduced to pills, insulin and electric shocks that he accepted without complaints.

In times, he had been a brilliant boy. He knew by heart Universal History; he spoke Spanish, French and Russian fluently and played violin really well. But the hardness of the treatments turned him into a completely dependent being, incapable even of walking on his own.

What he missed the more, apart from his family, was music. In the patients' room, was a gramophone in which you could hear always the same disc: a record of My fair lady. He ended so sick of his protagonists' voices that, one day, gathering his courage, he stopped the gramophone and broke the vinyl in two. Sherlock turned, from one day to the next, into what doctors considered an aggressive patient and they started to monitor him even more.

For Sherlock, that wasn't life. If he couldn't make his brain work, there was no worth in carry on fighting. "Why combat in a war that is lost?" He wrote one night in his diary. "These days I'm crying a lot and I'm in pain." He underlined the words "crying" and "pain", sighed and continued writing: "I don't matter to dad, mum and Mycroft. If it wasn't true, they would not have left me here. I would carry on writing, but these doctors who say that are going to cure me, give me so much medication that confuse me, and my hand refuses to obey me."

Sherlock sighed again and tears started to well up from his eyes. But he made one last effort and wrote: "I want to stop suffering".

The next days, Sherlock continued with his treatment and the visits to doctor Watson. But he never told anyone what he planned to do.

The nurses continued feeding him by tube morning, afternoon and night. One night, he tore it off, which provoked that they tied him again to the bed.

"Keep him tied. Makes him well. Is getting better, can't you tell?" He heard the psychiatrist.

But Sherlock, who had lost all contact with reality, never knew if those voices were real or produced by his own mind. Just a solution to his problem came to his mind.

At night, before they tied him to the bed, he made notes in his diary about what he had done during the day and, in the morning, at the patients' room, he drew his dreams.

"Fire." He said, taking the red pencil. "A black horse. Lightning. Candlelight."

That day, he took his notebook to doctor Watson's consulting room. When the session ended, the psychiatrist took it and opened it.

-Don't look at them, doctor Watson.- Said Sherlock softly.- They're my dreams.

But the doctor didn't pay attention to them.

-You know? At the start of the century, was a doctor in Vienna, a Freud, who said that dreams say something to us.

-Some kind of science of dreams?- Said Sherlock, laughing.- Well, well...

-Don't laugh. It was very serious.

Sherlock lied down in the couch and John carried on speaking:

-Let's see. Tell me what you dream and I'll tell you what it can mean.

Sherlock breathed deeply before saying to his doctor:

-Nightmares are considered dreams?

John bite his lips before saying:

-Good question... I think so. But, a lot of times, they can cause anguish. Are you having nightmares?- Sherlock nodded.- Well, tell me.

And Sherlock started his narration.

\- Well.- Said John.- Tonight, we'll give you something to help you sleep.

"Okay." Sherlock thought, resigned. "What does it matter, a pill more!"

That night, after dinner, Sherlock wrote his diary again:

"Pain. Suffering. Depression. Despair."

He squeezed his fists very strongly, to not cry, but crying overcame him and tears ended in the paper, smearing the ink. Completely blinded, he stood up. He got into the bed and soaked the pillow. He couldn't even breathe. He took his diary again and wrote some last words: "Mummy will cry. Daddy will cry. Mycroft will cry. But hearts are like pastries, they are made to be broken. Goodbye, everybody."

* * *

CHAPTER IV

The next day, when the male nurses came into Sherlock's room, they found the wall stained with blood.

-But, what is this?- Said one of them.

They obtained the answer when they saw the bed. Sherlock managed to undo his ties and had broken a glass. He had one of the pieces in his hand and a big wound in his neck.

-God help us!- The other one ejaculated ringing the bed's bell.

They touched Sherlock and he didn't respond. When Doctor Watson arrived, he only could confirm the nurses' suspicions.

-He's dead.- Whispered.- I'm calling his family.

The next day, they took Sherlock's corpse to the morgue of Saint Bartholomew Hospital.

-Brining me work, Greg?- Said Molly, the pathologist.

-Yes. Mi first day and this...

-Oh, well... Needs must!

Before start, Molly uncovered the corpse.

"What a pity!" He though, crying. "He was such a young boy. I'm sure he could have done great things."

It was the first time that an autopsy made her sad. When she finished, she couldn't resist the temptation. She got his lips near to the boy's eyelids, now closed forever.

THE END


End file.
